I was wondering what the delta was between the screen sizes of the different iPhones you need to support as an iOS designer. Did some math and realized that, even though not perfect because of rounding errors, going from an iPhone 5 to a 6, you gain about 1 (44×44 point) column and 2 rows. Same happens going from an iPhone 6 to a 6 Plus.

Sketching on squared paper, I was curious to know how many rows and columns of tappable targets you could fit on the different iPhones. Some more math and I came up with these numbers, which I turned into a handy grid.

If you follow this grid, you get a good idea how much content you can fit on any iPhone screen. Again, it’s not perfect (rounding, status bar not included), but hopefully it’ll help you save some time sketching your next app.

Been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now. Some advice from a mentor and Mandy Brown’s article convinced me to pull the trigger.

This industry is built on people helping people.

When I started out designing websites, I’d email those who pioneered the craft. The questions I asked them feel trivial today, but the fact that 90% of the emails I sent out got a helpful reply helped me turn this passion I had into a real job. Through a lot of hard work and some luck, I’m now living a life I couldn’t even dream of a decade ago.

This experience of people helping out others has inspired me to give back to the community as much as possible. Responding to emails, grabbing coffee or lunch with whoever asks, reaching out to students proactively… It never feels like work.

Mandi Brown is better with words than I am:

I think mentoring is something we can do for each other regardless of our respective levels of experience.

But it’s hard to scale, which is why I’m doing this: Email me at tim+askme@maxvoltar.be with whatever questions you have. I’ll keep an eye on incoming questions and will try to group them around certain topics. Once an interesting topic emerges, I’ll write about it on this blog. That way I hope to build up some sort of resource for those who are starting and/or struggling in this industry.

This isn’t an ego thing; I know far from everything, but I have been doing this for over 10 years, and have made lots and lots of mistakes others shouldn’t need to repeat.

I’ve chosen this structure of you asking me questions (instead of me just blogging away) because I have no idea what you want to learn.

In the span of one life it’s impossible to learn everything, but we can cheat by sharing what we’ve learned so far.

The past 18 months were some of the best of my life, both personally and professionally. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in this business, on an app that transformed the way people interact with each other every single day, and also made a lot of new friends.

But it’s time to move on, time to solve a different set of problems.

I’ll be taking some time off with my family, and join the amazing Dropbox team early August.

Dropbox is a fascinating company. It provides value to a wide range of people, not just those who build things.

I can’t wait to learn from all the talented people I will soon call colleagues.

As we were driving home from a photo walk, we saw the sun setting. Took us 2 minutes to find a place where we could take a decent photo. 15 seconds after this photo was taken the sun was completely gone.

About Me

Hi, my name is Tim Van Damme. Formerly a freelance designer from Belgium, I now work as an interface designer for GowallaInstagramDropbox in Austin, Texas San Francisco, California. I’m happily married to the most beautiful girl in the world and we are expecting welcomed a baby girl into our lives late December 2011.